Fungus or Insect?

Just before Christmas, I was rearranging the my pot plant garden outside my door as the fig tree had grown so that it was shading some of the pots. While doing this, I uncovered a very fine looking snail beneath my strawberry pot. I was confronted with a problem – I didn't want Mr. Snail eating my strawberries (and/or other plants) but I couldn't stomach killing him. Solution: Keep him as a pet instead :) I will post more about him later... But tonight's post comes from something I found when picking a leaf from my plant for Mr. Snail to eat.

It was almost dark, so I didn't really look too closely at the leaves before I picked one, it was just one that was handy. As I came inside, into the light, I noticed something near the base of the leaf, that at the time I thought was a fungus of some sort. I decided seeing as my snail's new home is a little bit confined that I didn't want to put that in there for him with the rest of the leaf, as he doesn't have the option of running away if it ends up being noxious. So I broke that part of the leaf off, before giving him the rest of the leaf. I left the piece of leaf with the 'fungus' on my desk, because I intended to come back and look at it a little closer later – it looked quite unusual. I started work last week and have been quite busy, so I forgot about it for a few days. Then one day, I noticed the 'fungus' had moved! It was no longer on the leaf, which was by now a bit dried out and shriveled. Instead I saw it on a nearby box. It was then I discovered it was not a fungus at all, but a bug.

Turning it over I discovered it had little legs...

A google search soon revealed it was a cottony cushion scale insect (Icerya purchasi). The white 'cotton cushion' it makes is its egg sac, but this one's egg sac was only just beginning to be made. The egg sac can end up being bigger than the insect.

Like other scale insects, it feeds on sap. This made sense, as when I first found it, it was on the mid vien of the leaf. As the leaf shriveled up, it wouldn't have been receiving sap anymore and evidently it went off exploring in search of a new food source.

I was also intrested to find out that it was first described from specimens collected from New Zealand, despite it being a non-native pest species. It comes from Australia instead. It apparently will feed on a wide range of plant species, but is particularly partial to Pittosporum and Citrus species.

So that was my interesting find this week for Reconnect With Nature :) 

Yellow Daisies

I have been doing a horticulture course one evening a week. One of our recent assignments was to make a herbarium. For the assessment we were required to collect specimens from 10 different exotic species used in amenity horticulture, including trees, shrubs and climbers. I wasn't the smartest (in terms of doing the assessment) as I just went out and found ten specimens that I had no idea what most of them were, and then I was confronted with the challenge of finding out! Which was good, because I learned a lot, but was not so good for my assessment as I struggled to positively identify all ten specimens. Oh well! During my research, trying to identify my specimens, google kindly directed me to a neat wee blog Living a Good North Coast Life. The author has this brilliant idea where each week she finds something interesting out in nature, photographs it and shares about it on her blog, and then encourages her readers to go out and do the same. And to share links to their post on hers, so that everyone can all check out each others finds :) I really like this idea, and I need some motivation to get things going here again, so I'm keen to take part.

So here is something I thought was neat, that I discovered on Sunday. I had to go back later to take photos as I didn't have my camera with me at the time.

If you're walking down Rock's Road, heading towards the port, just past the beach, you round a corner where there is a little bit of a garden between the road and the footpath. If you are driving, you probably only see the pohutukawa trees, as the road is a little higher than the footpath and the garden. There are a few benches for people to sit on, some young pohutukawa trees and a lot of yellow daisies.

 At this time of year, the yellow daisy flowers are pretty much past it although there are still a few out. 

But a lot of them have gone to seed now. I've never paid much attention to the seeds before, but I was sitting on one of the benches, and I noticed this flower head next to me which had gone to seed. It was full of little red 'flowers'. 

Some plants have seeds with little parachutes to help carry them on the wind (think dandelions). These seeds were like that, but each seed had a little red, flower shaped parachute. 

Very pretty.

If you want to check out what interesting things others have shared this week, you can go to Reconnect with Nature to find out :) 

Back Again... Passionvine Hopper Nymph

I know I haven't posted for a while, but I keep seeing things lately that I want to share with you all, so I am back again :)

I found this interesting looking wee fellow a few days ago.

What impressed me most, and made me pay attention and look closer, was the fact he (or she) had a lovely big fan of white 'fluff' on his rear end. Held up for all the world to see, like a peacock of the insect world. Most unusual.

He decided to hang around my room for a couple of days, during which time he moulted, and sadly his big tail of fluff got smaller during the moulting process.

It took me a while to figure out what this strange wee fellow was. Based on the shape of his body and his very good hopping ability - he hops like a giant flea! and the fact I found an adult one crawling the bean plant outside my door this morning, I think this wee fellow is a juvenile Passionvine Hopper.

The adults have wings, which he will gain when he goes through his final moult. The adults also lack the 'fluff' this wee guy had, but if it gets smaller which each subsequent moult, then this makes sense.

Patterns in Nature: Alluvial Patterns

Another beach one! There is a small water discharge coming out of the sea wall near Tahunanui Beach, which when the tide is out, forms quite intricate and extensive braided river/delta patterns on the sand, but at a much smaller scale than a real braided river (making it much easier to capture the patterns!).

Could they be mountain ranges?

Seeing them reminds me of flying over the Sahara (on the Frankfurt to Abuja leg of the journey) on my way to Nigeria. Not because the patterns I saw were the same as these, but because I sensed the same scalelessness. Flying over the desert you can see the dunes, rocks, hills and valleys etc, but there is nothing for scale, until you start nearing more civilised areas nearer its edges. I got this sense that it was so enormously vast, until we flew over more habitable areas with roads and trees and realised that it wasn't really so vast as it had seemed (although it was still quite vast, and occupies the better part of whole countries!). Even though these patterns on the beach are over an area of just a few square metres, between the outlet and the tide, I get that same sense of scalelessness, that same sense of vastness, especially in these photos where I can cut out the surrounding scenery.

Or vast braided river patterns woven across the plains? 

I can just imagine this last one as hair. All it needs is a smooth spot of sand to the right of the photo, where one could draw a face on the sand :)

Patterns in Nature: Sand Dollars

At New Years I was walking along the beach at New Brighton with a friend, and we kept finding broken sand dollars on the sand... Sand dollars are a kind of sea urchin with flattened shells.

This one had two segments still stuck together, so shows the patterns better

When whole, the sand dollar consists of 5 segments, but we mostly found only single segments, but one or two with two segments still attached together. We thought the patterns on their shells were pretty neat. Below are some of the patterns in close up.

We also found one segment that had been broken to give a cross section of the inside...

Pretty, huh? 

If you want to learn more about sand dollars, This  page has some good info plus some cool videos of living sea urchins and sand dollars.

Update on Calendars + Survey

First an update on the calendars: They are currently at the printers. Hopefully I will have them back and ready to deliver next week.

I have ordered a few extra copies of both the general and the insect calendars, so if you haven't ordered any yet, but will still like one, you still have a chance! They will be available on a first come, first served, basis. They are NZ$16 each + postage. To see the images included in the calendars, please see here.

Second: In the Small Business Management course I am doing, we are currently looking at marketing. One of our assignments includes conducting a market research survey. My survey is about calendars, and if you are able to answer the survey for me it would be much appreciated! Please click here to take the survey. Your answers will not only help me complete my assignment, but will be useful for helping me design my calendars in the future. :)

Thank you!

Calendar time :D

 

Its calendar time again, and I have two 2014 calendars available this year.

• General Theme - A selection of flowers, birds, landscapes and other photos, similar to last years calendar.
• Insects Theme - A creepy crawly themed one because a couple of people suggested the idea and I thought it would be fun - for those more adventurous among us!

 

The calendars will be available for NZ$16 each + postage (if applicable). I will take orders and then get everyone's printed together at the same time (in early-mid November). I will discuss payment options with you when you order. Orders can be sent to amgrassham@hotmail.co.nz Please feel free to ask any questions if you wish :)

Photos in each of the calendars are shown below:

General Theme:


January

February

March 



April




May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Insects Theme:

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December